


Sometimes a doctor, isn't a doctor

by LittleMissSweetgrass



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Not Beta Read, Period Typical Attitudes, Red Harvest is both Anishinaabe and Comanche, culture clash, traditional healing practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 15:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17449346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissSweetgrass/pseuds/LittleMissSweetgrass
Summary: After the battle at Rose Creek, Red Harvest stays behind to offer his help with tending to the wounded.Too bad no one appreciates his methods.





	Sometimes a doctor, isn't a doctor

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a ficlet i wrote cause i missed Red Harvest and this cast of dumb rowdy boys-- except Horne, he can rot.
> 
> Red is doing Anishinaabe-ish practices, mainly cause i HC him as half cause then i can apply knowledge i already know onto him lmao
> 
> I'm also trying to describe his cultural world view compared to settlers, but i dont wanna go teacher mode in the fic cause it sounds out of place. If u got any questions about something he says or does, just ask me i'll be more than willing to explain in detail <3 
> 
> Not-Beta Read

The scent of the ill filled this little room that acted as a healing tent. He hadn’t meant to stay as long as he did after the battle-- his heart yearned to return home to his family, the weight of his deeds and actions heavy on his spirit. But after he spent the last day smudging and praying he returned to Sam to tell him that he was leaving. However, once he found out that this town had no actual healers except for one woman who was on her moon cycle, Red Harvest figured he had to stay. He didn’t particularly care for the healing of this town and it’s citizens, but he was strangely fond of the small group of settlers he took up arms with. 

His uncle always told him that battle and killing changes a person.

Anyway, he felt a type of kinship with this ragtag group of men, and seeing them be treated with Bad Medicine sat wrong with him.

The settlers didn’t seem to realize that having a woman on her moon time handle medicine or anything used to heal the wounded was not only bad for the patients, but for her own health as well. Everything these white men did was strange really, especially their blant mistreatment of woman. Not only should she be resting, but her own magic during this time would counteract anything that powered whatever medicine the white men used.

He tried to get Sam to at least understand why he was refusing to let the nurse tend to Billy, Goodnight, Horne and Faraday, but he could feel the frustration mount when cultural differences couldn’t be understood. No one understood that it was Bad Medicine and thought that he was staying that a woman couldn’t heal them because she had a moontime, or that the moontime was a bad thing--which it wasn’t. Having Miss Cullen scream at him wasn’t an event he’d like to repeat, but he stood his ground.

At this point he kind of wanted to just them do their strange ways so he could be free to leave, but guilt at the thought weighed on him. He had bonded with these dumb settlers damnit, and the thought of inflicted them with Bad Medicine when he could have stopped it was something he couldn’t face. 

So he merely took the medical supply bag from Miss Cullen and locked the door on her red, angry face. 

As Sam and Miss Cullen banged on the door he slipped out the room’s window to grab his own medical supplies off his horse and climbed his way back in. He had smudged the whole room, giving his prayer to Creator, to the spirits, and to his ancestors in hopes that they help his friends and battle-mates recover.

So here he was, spending the day cleaning wounds, stitching up cuts, and smearing salves onto skin before wrapping them up. He couldn’t heal them completely in the traditional way, he wasn’t a healer, he didn’t know the proper ceremonies and he didn’t have the time or the resources. Instead he did a strange mix of both his medical practices and the settlers’. 

The room was heavy with the scent of smudge and the sound of flames as the kettle of cedar tea warmed in the fireplace. With the windows closed and curtains drawn, Red worked by firelight, using a cloth to wash the bodies of these men with the cedar tea. He sang under his breath while he worked, trying to remember the old healing songs, and hoped they would work on people who don’t believe in their power.

He was running the wet cloth over Billy’s hair when he felt, instead of heard, the man gasp. Continuing the motion and the singing, Red looked down at the man, watching him struggle to open his eyes. 

When he did his eyes were glazed, almost unseeing but still searching for something. Probably someone, as Red had seen how devoted the man was to his partner.

“G-g..’igh” The dark haired man murmured. He weakly struggled, trying to see anything that looked like his partner in the dim lighting.

Red shushed the man, forcing him to lay still. “The bearded man still lives, so rest my friend. 

Billy stared at him, eyebrows furrowing in concentration or confusion, Red couldn’t tell. He muttered something in no language Red understood, and fell back to sleep. 

After an hour of cleaning, singing, and sweating on his part from the heat in the room, there was a knock at the door. Red quieted, listening to whoever was on the other side hiss at someone he couldn’t hear. 

The boy opened the door a crack, and was surprised to see Vasquez standing in front of him, looking uneasy but holding a tray with a pitcher of water and some of that gross yellow corn bread the settlers were so fond of. Red eyed the tray for a moment before looking up at the man’s face, waiting for an explanation.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Chisholm said yer doin’ some weird Indian ritual magic and ‘ya don’t want anyone else in there with ‘ya, but I got some, uh, snacks I guess, ‘nd I’d like to see how Faraday is doin’, so, uh…” He trailed off, looking really uneasy with his nosed bunched up like he smelt something bad as he offered the tray.

Red frowned up at him, watching the man squirm for a moment. “I didn’t say everyone was banned from entering, just the nurse. You are welcome to visit the loud white man if you wish. I just ask that you cleanse first.” Red took a step back, letting the door open more to let the man in.

As Vasquez muttered to himself in his language, Red padded over to the smudge bowl. As he relit the sage embers he could hear Vasquez set down the tray on one of the end tables.

“What is this smell? ‘Nd why is it so dark in here? ‘Ya can barely see a thing.” 

Red brought the bowl over, washing the smoke over Vasquez’s head, shoulders, heart, and guiding his hands over the smoke to wash them. “Take a breath in” The man hesitated, but took a deep breath and Red nodded, satisfied. 

He returned the bowl to its place on Goodnight’s end table and turned to see Vasquez finishing a gesture he had seen religious white men make when they visited his family’s community. Talking about their god and Jesus and wanting to take children away to learn this religion. 

Red Harvest’s parents never let him near those men, said they followed a cruel god who hurt children and women. His cousins would tease him by saying those white men eat and drink the flesh and blood of their god like the Wendigo monster that haunts his mother’s homeland.

“This smell is sage, sweetgrass, and cedar. Cleansing medicines my mother and her sister use. I was never taught Comanche healing practices, as my aunt always offered to heal me and my cousins first.” Red poured a mug of water for Vasquez, but opted to use his mug for some cedar tea. He ignored the bread, still not finding the white man's’ food to his liking. “I don’t have a lot of the cedar, I’m hoping it lasts long enough.” 

Vasquez dragged a chair over to Faraday’s bedside, checking over the bandages with a thoughtful frown, squinting through the dim lighting. “I’m sure ‘ya can get Chisholm ta get ‘ya some more of the plant when ‘ya run out.” 

Red gave a huff at the dismissive tone and took a sip of his tea, watching over his patients. “I doubt he’ll find any. The plant does not grow here, it comes from my mother’s homeland.” He thought for a moment, trying to remember the geography of the white man’s world he was taught before he left on his revenge quest. “I believe that area is near the city…” He struggled to remember the English word of the city. “Deet-roo-it?”

The brown skinned man actually looked up at that “Qué mierda, you mean Detroit?” He boggled at the boy across the room sitting on the floor. “That’s-- what are-- that’s across the country!” 

Red Harvest shrugged, sipping at his tea again. “Yes. Which is why it’ll be hard to find. My mother has trouble getting it from traders as it is, I do not think Sam will have any better luck.”

“If yer madre is from so up north, qué mierda is she doin’ down here? I thought yer people didn’t like moving out of yer areas?”

Red shrugged again. “We don’t, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t taken and forced into different lands. My mother and aunt were taken by some white men and brought down here, my father and his Community found and saved them. They stayed with him, better life as free people than slaves to the white men or dead out in the wild alone.”

“Slaves? Your people--” He was cut off as Goodnight groaned in his bed. Red shot up and went to his bedside, offering the man some cooled tea to drink. 

“‘Illy, wh’re’s Bill…” Goodnight ignored the tea and struggled against his blankets. Red forced him back down gently, humming the song his father sang to him when he had a nightmare as a child. The tune seemed to calm the old white man, stilling his thrashing for a moment. “Billy…?”

“No, but the man lives still. Go to sleep, he will still be here when you wake.” Red continued to hum until Goodnight closed his eyes again and his body fell limp. He didn’t look good, his skin was too pale and his eyes seemed sunken in their dark, bruised pits. 

They sat in near silence, Red singing quietly and Vasquez sitting at Faraday’s bedside, tense in the glow of firelight. Red let a few more minutes pass before he spoke again, in a quiet tone as to not awaken the ill. 

“The loud white man hasn’t woken yet, but his injuries were the cleanest and easiest to fix. I think he will be fine once he awakens. Horne…. will live. Billy and Goodnight had the dirtiest wounds, even though both have waken, I fear they are the closest ones to fall pray to their injuries.”

Vasquez grunted, continuing to stare at Faraday’s limp hand instead.

Red let a few more breaths of silence to pass, waiting, before turning away from the pair. He finished his tea in a long swig, set down his mug, then went to refill his bowl with clean cedar tea. He soaked the cloth in the tea and went back to his task of cleaning the sweat from his patients faces, going back to Billy. He continued singing lowly, praying for good health to come to his friends.

A while past, so long that Red Harvest had moved on to Horne, when Vasquez moved. He stood up with a clean looking cloth in his hands, and dipped it into the cedar tea bowl on Horne’s end table, then moved to wipe at Faraday’s face.

Red continued to sing.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to ask me anything @ Youareunbearable.tumblr.com *peace sign*


End file.
